Höhere Geburtenraten in Deutschland: die Rolle des Systems frühkindlicher Bildung und Betreuung

One of the main future tasks of our society is to slow down demographic change. Therefore, an important aim of German policy is to implement a fertility-friendly family policy. This paper studies the role of early childhood education and care within such a family policy. At first, fertility behaviour in Germany is shortly described. In the next section, the economic theory of fertility is used in order to analyze the individual decision-making process on whether or not to start a family. It turns out that the compatibility of family and job is increasingly significant. As a consequence, a proper system of early child education and care of good quality can be expected to have a positive effect on fertility behaviour. However, in comparison to other European countries Germany is still running a system of only moderate quality. This is why only a fundamental reform of the system of early child education and care can have a significant positive impact on fertility behaviour. In the last section of the paper, we give a preliminary discussion of the main aspects of such a reform.